Forget the LSU-Alabama stereotypes, toss out everything you thought you knew about the Tide and Tigers and old-school, down-and-dirty, off-tackle, in-the-trenches football.
Oh, for sure, it will be there Saturday in Tiger Stadium. Even in college football’s current beep-beep approach to offense, there’s a place for blocking and occasional tackling, and these two teams still cling protectively to most of the old values.
But it’s not the same teams that played twice in the 2011 season and in eight quarters, plus an overtime period, scored a grand, combined total of one touchdown ?— remember, even the Tide’s 21-0 victory in the BCS championship rematch was actually five field goals and a lone touchdown, that one not until the fourth quarter to complete the scoring.
It’s still all about the players, who will likely decide the game. And it will be arguably one of the most physical games of the college season.
But perhaps the most intriguing matchup could come from the
sidelines, where two of the game’s top coordinators, both unapologetic X-and-O junkies, will stage their own personal and very cerebral chess match.
You can almost imagine Alabama’s Lane Kiffin and LSU’s Dave Aranda at some point leaning back and smiling, “Your move.”
Kiffin always looked like an odd coupling with his head coach, and maybe it was while Nick Saban wasn’t looking that Kiffin, in his third year, has transformed the Tide offense into everything up-tempo and fancy that Saban used to rail about. Bama rarely uses a fullback anymore, almost never has a quarterback take a snap under center, and Kiffin and Saban have had more than a few sideline verbal spats during the transformation.
But Kiffin seems to have won Saban’s respect — and, with it, the battle to turn the Tide into a (gulp) genuine spread offense.
The scheme is only part of it.
“He’s a great game-caller,” Orgeron said of Kiffin. “He can see things very fast. He knows what the defense does and knows the right play to call. He’s excellent at it.”
LSU will counter with Aranda, an off-season coup hire for since-fired head coach Les Miles.
Interim head coach Ed Orgeron calls him the “top defensive coordinator in the game today.”
Both are young and considered the masters of their craft.
Orgeron also calls him the “mad scientist” of defense, constantly down in the lab tinkering with this and that in his proactive approach to treating defense like offense to scheme and conjure up every possible advantage.
The Tigers have given up the fewest touchdowns in the nation this season with eight, and are the only team to have not allowed more than 21 points in a game.
So two of the best will match wits.
And that’s about where the similarities end.
Orgeron, a close friend of Kiffin’s, said the Bama offensive coordinator was “born with a football in his hand,” though for years it was suspected to be the gridiron version of a silver spoon.
Being the son of well-respected, longtime NFL coach Monte Kiffin no doubt opened some doors. Though only 41, he has already held down three head coaching jobs — he was the youngest head coach in the NFL with the Oakland Raiders and, for a time, the youngest power five college coach with Tennessee.
Aranda is the coaching version of a gym rat. His football roots were at Cal-Lutheran (yes, the Kingsmen play football) and he made his way up the ranks at such unglamorous coaching outposts as Delta State, Southern Utah and Utah State.
But all along, Aranda treated defense almost like an addiction, living, eating and breathing it. Mostly soaking it all in like a sponge.
“He told me he’d go to clinics and buy coaching books and not have money to eat the rest of the month,” Orgeron said.
Aranda got his big-time coaching breakthrough at Wisconsin, where his Badgers finished first nationally in total defense, second in scoring defense, third in pass defense and fourth in run defense.
His studious approach doesn’t fit the stereotype of the wild-eyed defensive lunatic.
“He has this little notebook and writes everything down,” Orgeron said. “Never seen anybody get so much on a page.”
Orgeron may actually know Kiffin better than Aranda.
Orgeron was Kiffin’s staff as defensive line coach when the latter was head coach at Southern Cal. And it was Orgeron who took over as interim coach when Kiffin was famously fired at the Los Angeles airport after returning from a road game with eight games remaining in the season.
Generally, Orgeron and Kiffin speak at least once a week, just to chat.
Not this week.
“He knows we’re not talking this week,” Orgeron said. “Dear friend of mine. Wish him the best in everything. Except this week.”
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